5 – His Criminal Behavior Landed Him in Prison
Malcolm initially engaged in criminal activity when he was just nine years old in Lansing but there were mitigating circumstances. He was simply trying to help his family who were in dire economic straits so he stole food from grocery stores. There is little evidence that he continued along this path as a teenager and it was only when he moved to Boston that things started to go sour for Malcolm. While there, he became attracted to the openness of the ghetto when compared to the dull and strait-laced behavior of Ella and her social circle.
Malcolm quickly made friends with a man named Shorty who was also from Lansing. Their common background meant they shared a bond and Shorty soon took Malcolm under his wing. He taught the young man about ghetto life and helped him get a job as a shoe-shiner at the Roseland Ballroom. It was there that he learned all about ‘hustling’. The man he was replacing at the Ballroom told Malcolm about the various hustles he could do to boost his earnings. For instance, he learned how to ‘shame’ customers into giving him tips as he handed out towels in the restroom.
After work, Malcolm met Shorty and his friends who enjoyed gambling, drinking liquor, and smoking marijuana. During the 1940s, Malcolm was fired from two railroad jobs and became a waiter at Small’s Paradise in Harlem, New York. The nightclub’s clientele included career criminals and they taught him about various criminal activities in the city including robbery, selling drugs, pimping, and the numbers. After getting fired from Small’s, Malcolm became part of the Harlem underworld and got involved in the numbers racket.
While he became known to the city’s narcotics squad, Malcolm continued to work in numerous rackets and eventually graduated to armed robbery. His first arrest was for apparently stealing and pawning Ella’s fur coat and he was later arrested for allegedly mugging someone at gunpoint. His third arrest was the one that almost ruined his life. Malcolm committed burglary in several homes in Boston and when he was caught and convicted, he started serving an eight-to-ten-year sentence at Charlestown State Prison in 1946.
Malcolm served seven years of his sentence and became known as ‘Satan’ by his fellow inmates because of his habit of frantically pacing around his cell, cursing God and the Bible. His attitude changed while inside and soon, he was a voracious reader. He later wrote: “In every free moment I had, if I was not reading in a library, I was reading on my bunk. You couldn’t have gotten me out of books with a wedge.” He received letters from his family urging him to look into the Nation of Islam (NOI), as it was “the natural religion for the black man.” While still in prison, he began correspondence with NOI leader, Elijah Muhammad. By the time he became a free man, Malcolm’s path had been made clear.